Francesco Conti (born 30 August 1962) is an Italian

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

manager Management (or managing) is the administration of an organization, whether it is a business, a nonprofit organization, or a government body. It is the art and science of managing resources of the business. Management includes the activities o ...

and former player.

Playing career

Conti played as a

midfielder A midfielder is an outfield position in association football. Midfielders may play an exclusively defensive role, breaking up attacks, and are in that case known as defensive midfielders. As central midfielders often go across boundarie ...

for the Entella youth team, and in 1980 he was bought by

Genoa Genoa ( ; it, Genova ; lij, Zêna ). is the capital of the Italian region of Liguria and the List of cities in Italy, sixth-largest city in Italy. In 2015, 594,733 people lived within the city's administrative limits. As of the 2011 Italian ce ...

, who were playing in

Serie B The Serie B (), currently named Serie Balkrishna Industries, BKT for sponsorship reasons, is the second-highest division in the Italian football league system after the Serie A. It has been operating for over ninety years since the 1929–30 ...

at the time, but he never managed to play a game with the ''griffins''. He then went to play for Imperia in

Serie C2 Lega Pro Seconda Divisione was the fourth highest football league in Italy, the lowest with a professional status. Usually it consisted of 36 teams, but in the 2011–12 season, there were 41 teams divided geographically into two divisions of 2 ...

where he remained for four years. During the 1984–85 season, he played for Sanremese in

Serie C1 Lega Pro Prima Divisione was the third highest football (soccer), football league in Italy. It consisted of 33 teams, divided geographically into two divisions of 16 and 17 teams for group A and B respectively. Until 2008 it was known as Serie C1 ...

, and he spent the 1985–86 season with Francavilla, with whom he obtained a promotion from

. He obtained his second promotion in C1 during the 1989–90 season with Fano, and a third promotion during the 1991–92 season with Ravenna, a side which was managed by a young

Luigi Delneri Luigi Delneri (born 23 August 1950), often incorrectly written as Del Neri, is an Italian football manager and a former player. After a playing career as a midfielder including for several Serie A clubs, he began managing in the lower leagues, a ...

. After the club's promotion, Delneri left to manage Novara, but Conti remained at Ravenna and helped the team achieve promotion to

. During the 1993–94 season, he played his first and only full season in the Italian second division, and then he rejoined Delneri at Nocerina, where he obtained another promotion to Serie C1. He ended his career at the end of the 1999–2000 season with his hometown club Entella.

Management career

After the end of his playing career, Conti immediately became a manager and was called to be the assistant of Delneri at

ChievoVerona Associazione Calcio ChievoVerona, commonly referred to as ChievoVerona or simply Chievo , is a former professional Italian football club named after and based in Chievo, a suburb of 4,500 inhabitants in Verona, Veneto, and owned by Paluani, a ...

. He followed Delneri for the rest of his career and served as his assistant manager at

Juventus Juventus Football Club (from la, iuventūs, 'youth'; ), colloquially known as Juve (), is a professional Association football, football club based in Turin, Piedmont, Italy, that competes in the Serie A, the top tier of the Italian football leagu ...

during the

2010–11 Serie A The 2010–11 Serie A (known as the Serie A TIM for sponsorship reasons) was the 109th season of top-tier Italian football, the 79th in a round-robin tournament, and the 1st since its organization under a league committee separate from Serie B ...

season.

External links

1962 births Living people S.S.D. Sanremese Calcio players People from Chiavari Association football midfielders Italian footballers Sportspeople from the Province of Genoa Footballers from Liguria {{Italy-footy-midfielder-1960s-stub